Valdez 1
Adam Valdez
Dr. Santas
Phil 3180
Rethinking Our Diet: Perspectives on Veganism
Abstract: This essay presents the current arguments and the critique of the vegan diet. First are the arguments on the immorality of eating meat from the perspectives of Rights Based arguments and Utilitarian and Consequentialist arguments. Next presented is a critique on how veganism is unfair to women, children, and the elderly and how it unwittingly isolates and separates humans from nature. Finally, is the presentation of ecocentrism. The essay concludes with an explanation of how ecocentric thinking can progress our diet and everyday life.
- Rights Based Arguments, Utilitarian Arguments and Consequential Arguments
In this essay, I will present the cases that say we shouldn’t lean towards veganism, but more towards or a diet towards the acceptance of a balance with vegetarianism and meat eating. Veganism is a dietetic philosophy that states that any use or exploitation of animals is ethically wrong. First, I will start with a Rights Based philosophy, then moveto Utilitarianism, and, finally, presentConsequentialism, a non-utilitarian philosophy. Then, I will show various criticisms for each philosophy, and why they inadequately describe a moral life style. Then, I will conclude with what I feel we as a people should strive to achieve, ecocentrism.
Tom Regan, in his essay, The Case for Animal Rights states that if an entity posses “inherent value,” then it should “be treated with respect…in ways that do not reduce them to the status of things, as if they existed as resources for others (71).” Furthermore, Regan contends that “inherent value belongs equally to those who are the experiencing subjects of a life (72)” and that people should not view animals “as lacking independent value…[or as] a renewable resource (72).”This, in and of itself, is a rational argument, and states that animals and humanity should have some basic fundamental rights that avoids exploitation for selfish gain. This argument, usually called the Rights Based argument, is the crux ofRegan’s philosophy and it claims that every person could adopt a moral and ethical diet based off of a Rights Based argument with a few exceptions (mainly those who live in areas where plants are hard to come by such as the tundra or arctic regions of the world.) Additionally, Regan is very cut and dry on what it means to violate the rights of animals: to use an animal in any way is wrong. Thus, to use an animal for dietary purposes, material purposes or any other material gain is ethically wrong.While Regan’s right based argument states that all things have equal value, the utilitarian perspective states that value comes in the form of pleasure and pain and this should be used to judge what is ethical and valuable to people.
Utilitarianism states that to measure an ethical solution a person should do what promotes the most good for the majority of the people. Peter Singer, a vegan utilitarian, in his essay All Animals are Equal states that humans should avoid speciesism, or the “prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species (54).” Specieism, Singer argues, is the reason of injustice for racism, sexism, and other social oppressions as well. Thus, when we try to make decisions to overcome these problems, we should consider that “if a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing…that suffering into [our] consideration (55),” yet these considerations can only apply to those that are sentient. However, Singer quickly notes that equality in pain has to be taken on case to case basis, because a slap on the rump of a horse is highly different than a slap against an infant. Thus, because animals feel pain they deserve as much respect and consideration as a human to stay consistent in an ethical good for everything.
But for George Schleder, he claims that a utilitarian should practice “ethical meat eating,” which means that humans should change their “eating habits so that we eliminate factory farms and supplement our diet of commercially harvested vegetables with any homegrown vegetables we can feasibly raise and with a small supply of the meat of grazing animals (well treated and relatively painlessly killed) (500).” Schleder continues by stating that the “costs of making the transition from present factory farm practices to an ethical meat eating arrangement will not be so great as to outweigh the benefit (501)”, and furthermore, Schleder asserts that the “average utility will be greater under ethical meat eating (504).”These two arguments present how utilitarianism can be diverse and from the same philosophy. Utilitarianism works much like the scientific method in that the hypothesis is always under scrutiny. Consequentialism on the other hand argues that our diet should be guided by the consequences of our actions, not by pleasure or pain.
Consequentialism is the ethical philosophy that “morality of a token action is determined solely by the value of the consequences in terms of the overall balance of intrinsic goods versus evils produced by that action (Nobis 136)” and is a non-utilitarian perspective. Nobis, a consequentalist vegan, supports his argument by stating that people should be consequentalists because it provides “the virtues that are commonly said to motivate vegetarianism: compassion, caring, sensitivity to cruelty and suffering (both animal and human), resistance to injustice, and integrity, among others (Nobis 138).” The real ethical substance to the consequentalist philosophy comes in the claim that when the individual purchases meat, not only are they supporting the institutions that led to the creation of the product, but they, the consumer, are also morally responsible for their purchase. Thus, those who claim to be virtuous should be ethical vegans because “the morality of an action is to be explained by the character of the agent (Nobis 154).” So, if a person is a consequentialist vegan, then the reason they should be vegans is because they are trying to reduce the suffering in the world by not buying a product and not participating in the buying and selling of animal products. This argument makes sense when considering that Americans have more purchasing power when compared to the rest of the world. Also the evidence of how purchasing power is an effective change for moral and ethical standards can be seen in the form of boycotts done during the Civil Rights movement in America.
- Critique of Arguments
One of the main tenets of veganism is that, if all things are equal, a vegan diet is sufficient for survival. Regan argues that everyone can achieve a vegan diet, however this view is at most a fantasy. The guiding of this ethical absolutism stems from the Principle of Equality, which states that the regardless of age, sex, or any other qualities, that all beings should be treated with respect and “any innocent individual has the right to act to avoid being made worse-off even if doing so harms other innocents (George 79).” As Kathryn Paxton George points out, Regan’s model of ethics ignores “the different nutritional needs of adults versus infants and children and men versus women (George 80).” As Paxton George points out, the vegan diet requires supplements for women, children and the elderly. She argues that this is an unnecessary burden for the sake of equality.Certain vitamins can only be absorbed through the ingestion of animals that are needed for women, children and the elderly. As Annabelle Smith writes:
Restriction of animal product consumption removes the ability of an individual to orally ingest Vitamin D3, leaving the biosynthesis that takes places during exposure to direct sunlight as the body’s primary source of Vitamin D3. This creates a significant problem for vegans who live in areas of the world where the number of hours in which they can absorb UVB (ultraviolet B—the band of the ultraviolet spectrum responsible for the synthesis of Vitamin D3) rays from direct sunlight is limited. It is also an issue for vegans who are dark skinned or elderly, for those whose culture stipulates that their clothing cover all of their skin or for those who use sunscreen whenever they go outside. All of these factors decrease the ability of the body to synthesize Vitamin D3 via UVB absorption. (Smith 302-303).
But Vitamin D3 deficiency is not the only problem. Iron and calcium deficiencies also pose a serious risk for vegan women, children, and the elderly. Other medical studies show “a statistically significant correlation between decreased animal protein ingestion and low BMD [Bone Mineral Density] in the hip area (Smith 304).”Both the utilitarian perspective and the consequential perspective fall victim in addressing this difference between the varying genders and people around the world.Men and women are built physiologically different from one another and is an issue that seems to go unmentioned in Rights Based, Utilitarian, and Consequential veganism.
Another critique, in regards to the utilitarian approach is that animals are subjected to the standards of human pain and pleasure. Also, a utilitarian perspective perpetuates the idea of anthropocentricity. Anthropocentricity is the view that humans are more important than the rest of the environment. This type of thinking, when guided by utilitarian motives can lead to immoral actions. For example, would a flock of chickens raised on open-range practices benefit from being debeaked so that the hens don’t kill each other through pecking? Or is the process of debeaking a practice that satisfies the owner of the animal so that they can benefit the most? To give more insight into the practice, debeaking is a process that uses a hot knife to chop off the upper portion of the beak. This process is not painless and as Singer points out:
Between the horn and the bone is a thin layer of highly sensitive soft, tissue, resembling the “quick” of the human nail. The hot knife used in debeaking cuts through this complex of horn, bone and sensitive tissue, causing severe pain. (36)
Regardless of the answer, who is going to make the final choice? The chickens or the humans? Obviously, it is the human who is going to make the decision for the animals. Utility in this case seems to appear based off a human arbitrariness and seems to be holding up two different standards of thought: one for humans and one for animals. It is clear in other cases such as docking animals’ tails, taking out the vocal cords in dogs and parrots that these situations are “unproblematically immoral (Zamir 369)” because the owner decides to change the animal unnecessarily for aesthetic reasons. Yet, when it comes to debeaking, Zamir, a utilitarian vegan, argues that it is in the best interests of the chickens to be debeaked. This anthropocentric view advances down a slippery slope to any sort of justification on the behalf of another species. For example, this same thinking would promote the total elimination of rats because some people considered them pests and it would be in the best interest for the human and the human’s pet because the extermination of rats would not only stop the transfer of disease to people, but it would keep other pets from being harmed from rats, like kittens and puppies. However, the total elimination of the rat would, I feel, bring more troubles to the overall ecology for both human and animals alike. Thus, the ethics of utilitarianism is also shaky and promotes such elimination-thinking that allows anthropocentricity and should be dismissed entirely or reviewed. However, even though Utilitarianism does not work, the non-utilitarian approach based off of consequentalism fares no better.
The major flaw to consequentalism is that the individual really cannot change, the wild walk of the market forces, and that exercising the right to not buy something, or to forgo a product like meat will hardly be noticeable at the macro-level. Furthermore, the consequentialist will state that industries work on a threshold. A threshold is the argument that current resources supply the current demand, but if the demand continues to grow, so that one more person can participate, then there will be one more institution for the product. To put it in more of a visual example, if a car plant can only produce 3,000 cars, and the demand of the car is 3,001 and climbing, then a new car plant is needed to supply that extra demand. As Chartier criticizes why the threshold is flawed:
The argument assumes that actors are largely undifferentiated, substitutable consumers, that there are very large numbers of these actors, and that they are, in general, uncoordinated. It also assumes, more controversially, that there are, in fact, thresholds, that production levels do not increase or decline in relatively fine-grained fashion, but rather make leaps at key points. If there are not thresholds of the relevant sort, the argument is, obviously, in trouble (236).
Clearly, as Chartier points, the economic market is more complex than: if person A does not purchase this product, then we will have to reform our distribution and methods in manufacturing. So, what is the consequentialist supposed to do if their purchasing power does little to grand scheme of the market? Consequentialism is, I feel, too weak of an argument to suggest veganism because it fails to address that economic purchases are important when considering both the macro-level and micro-level of the market. So, the question now is, how do we break away from anthropocentric views on nature and how can we be morally responsible for our diets without looking at veganism as a solution?
Part III. An Ecocentric Approach
A vegan perspective is, I feel, too anthropocentric and it unwittingly positions man over nature. The moral vegan position states that man should not use animals for our own exploitation, and that we should leave these animals to live in the wild, untainted by our hands. Yet, the problem with the vegan proposal is it takes humans completely out of nature and puts a division, unwittingly, between man and nature. If humanity and nature are to live healthy lives both metaphorically and figuratively speaking, then man and nature need to be one and see themselves as interconnected beings.
I would like to clarify that I am not suggesting that those who are practicing vegans now should stop altogether, or that they should eat meat, but rather my purpose is to add another level of criticism. I would also like to note that the ethics for factory farming go far beyond this paper, yet the vast literature on both sides, vegan and anti-vegan alike, feel that factory farms needs to either be demolished or revised completely. To claim that the current factory farms that compose our meat industry are a necessary evil for the consumption of meat is not only naïve but it also ignores the countless sufferings of the billions of animals used every year for human consumption.
The philosophy that man and nature are one is what Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist, calls “emptiness.” Emptiness “means empty of a separate self (16),” and means that everything is interconnected and states that we are part of nature and nature is part of us. Thus a piece of paper is not just a piece of paper, but “a cloud…the sunshine… [and] the logger who cut the tree (4).” This mindfulness that everything is connected is what I call “ecocentrism.”
There is no system in nature that works by itself. From the air we breathe, the water we drink, the plants we eat, and the animals we consume, every part of us in entwined with one another. This symbiosis describes a basic principle of nature: every species depends on one another to live and thrive. It would be arrogant of me, and of us, to assume that we as humans can decide to bow out of nature’s system or that we are unique organisms on Earth that do not need these systems of life. Even if we could all hypothetically stop our previous standards of living, the impact of such stopping would reverberate throughout the entire ecosphere.
As a species on Earth, we should recognize that our part in the ecosphere is just as important as those of the trees, rivers, and other natural objects and beings. In an ecocentric view all objects are importantto the survival of other species and to the human species.An ecocentric mind would not only value a tree for its oxygen and food, and other things it gives us, but would also see that a tree’s value just is. The intrinsic value of any organism or object is of itself. To claim otherwise flirts with the notion of anthropocentrism and again implicitly denies that humans are part of nature. As part of this system we need a diverse diet to survive and in an ecocentric view, meat eating is not seen as a necessary evil or a dominance complex but just part of a system in balance with nature. This does not mean that people should eat meat every day or indulge in overconsumption of large steaks or burgers, nor does it mean that the current slaughterhouses or factory farms are adequate to encourage ecocentric thinking and eating. What it does suggest is that if we want to be ethically and morally responsible in our diets then we need to follow a basic premise: take what you need, not what you want.